Raised in the Hedonism

By: Natalia M. Gómez A.

This short essay attempts to express in the most basic and neutral way the perspective
from people in a society raised on the most pure and innocent form of hedonism, as well
as its impact on the educational processes. On the frame of the 200th anniversary of
“La batalla de Boyacá”, an analysis of Colombian society and educational processes
has made its projections,and I must admit very proudly that we are as near to the goals
as the sun and the sea on the horizon. In addition, Colombia has been ranked once
again as the second happiest country in the world by the polling firm WIN-Gallup that
concerns about making polls, and recently has developed a way to rank and quantify
happiness, which is another support to express my own perspective and how much we
love the society we live in.

To begin with, I admire how we do not give importance to the millions of displaced
people, internal and external conflicts on the borderlines, poverty or even the drought
that Wayuu communities have too face on the Atlantic coast, because in the end we are
happy. Our happiness is so important that we have understood that our children must
be in an appropriate environment surrounded by the best technological devices where
we can have them under surveillance, because our tranquility suggests that it is better
to have them calm and not running here and there. Hence, here come the best two
inventions to have very peaceful kids, ritalin and video games. On the cases where they
do not have access to video games or technological devices they will have a least a
television, everyone does have one, and in most cases children will spend more time
with them than with their own family. On the pursuit of happiness, parents have realized
on the impact of having money to obtain better conditions of life, therefore children are
taken from their early stages to different centres where they grow with teachers and
partners even without having rules and values established on their behaviour. This ends
up in the emptiness and loneliness feelings, but it is quite understandable because
parents are attempting to be happy.

On the next stage of the educational process, we find teenagers that have been raised
on the system where teachers have become, caretakers and their incomes are not
coherent with their work, consequently that lowers their motivation to teach. With the
lack of motivation to teach comes the lack of motivation to learn, and schools have
become a center where kids are under surveillance while their parents work. On the
other hand, children and teenagers have become very wise, now they know how to
hack things, how to have Wifi, how to have access to inappropriate content and how to
spend hours and hours on social networks and this help them to develop their critical
thinking, to achieve meaningful learning and overall to become everyday a little bit
happier.

We live in a society where market strategies and policies to protect the most vulnerable
people really benefit them, and the economy is not important at all. Besides mothers’
work at home is well retributed by everyone, and they are not discriminated by raising
their kids with the necessary values and love without working extensively, where
families still exist and children live to be children. I found delectable the way in which
globalization and massification processes are manufacturing the same type of children
and teenagers, that eventually will be adults, because this guarantees less differences
among them and less unhappy people that criticizes the world and society.

Finally, I present this as the most simple form to talk about the society I live in and they
way it has involuted to make us progressively happier, to make us wiser and to make a
reform on the whole educational system. I am quite sure that this was exactly the
purpose of the enlightenment when it considered education as a right (Universal
declaration of human rights, 1948) , it was seeking for societies that taught how to work
and to have conditions to raise others’ children. But in the end who regards on ancient
considerations when there is happiness as a compass,and as a mean to an end.

References:

WIN-Gallup (2014). Global Barometer of Happiness and Hope.Retrieved from:

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-ranked-happiest-country-world-survey/